Brothers In Laughter
by Nata
Summary: Remus angsting over the loss of the Mauraders. An attempt to get into Angsty!Remus' character.


Crash.   
  
An empty glass bottle hit the wall. Anger. White-hot and passionate. Terrible and wonderful and a release at the same time.   
  
Shatter.   
  
Another one.   
  
"God ... " Remus Lupin slid down the length of the wall of the Shrieking Shack. It had undergone a pathetic attempt to make it normal again. Like a house. Like something. Like anything that would keep him from going over the edge. Because he was alone. Again. For the fourth time in his life, he'd been left behind by his best friends. Peter had betrayed them. James was dead. Sirius was framed for the deaths of his James and his lovely wife, Lily.   
  
And now Sirius was dead, too.   
  
He was the last Maurader.   
  
Fleeting memories of times back at school flashed through his mind. Like snatches of a kaleidoscope they came together to form times when things were good only to shatter again. Like the time they'd 'accidentally' set Lily's bookbag on fire ... the time they had all snuck out of the common room in the middle of the night. All the times they'd spent in Hogsmeade. Sirius, James ... and even Peter, so long ago, they'd been inseperable. You never saw one without the others. And if you did, the one was certain to be looking for the others.   
  
Just like now.   
  
Once, they'd all promised ... made a pact, that they wouldn't ever leave eachother. That they would stay together forever. That no one would have to be alone. How silly it would have seemed to anyone who wasn't the four of them. But it had meant so much. So much that he had three friends whom didn't leave him, even when they knew that he could kill them if it were ... that time of the month.   
  
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right that he was the only one left. They promised ...   
  
Promised.   
  
Cradling his head in his hands, he bit his lip to keep from crying. It didn't work. Tears swept down his face. Tears of complete sorrow, for he had lost everything in the world. Tears of rage, for it wasn't his fault. Tears of desperation because he hadn't been able to protect them. Tears of pain because he remembered a time when he had been happy.   
  
How long ago it seemed.   
  
Fifteen, sixteen years.   
  
Before the threat of Voldemort had loomed over all of their heads.   
  
Voldemort.   
  
It all came back to him. All the pain, all the suffering, all the loss ... everything.   
  
Just because he was a tragic little goody-two-shoes with a lust for power. Didn't think things were good enough for him.   
  
Bastard. Self-centered, arrogant bastard.   
  
"I believed you." Remus whispered agonizingly to the nothing that filled the ramshackle house so thickly you could cut it with a knife.   
  
"I believed you when you said we would always be together." Even when he heard himself, he couldn't believe how stupid he sounded. Like a soap opera. Like some sappy character who bemoaned about his life like he couldn't do anything about it. And he couldn't, really. But it was hard just sitting here, not going after the bastard who had killed his friends. Friends like a family. Killed -him-. He was the shell of a man, the shell of who once had been a happy, normal person.   
  
Tonks, Kingsley, Moody, Molly ... they all thought he was fine. Down, of course, but they didn't know where he disappeared to so many nights. Couldn't understand that there was nothing left for him anymore. Nothing. Sirius, James ... and even Peter. It stung. The loss. The hurt. Because he was alone. Always alone.   
  
Bottles of firewhiskey littlered the floor around him. Interupting the painstaking cleanliness that he had striven for the past days. Weeks. Cleaning kept his mind off of the things that he didn't want to think about. If he had his mind off of them, then he didn't have to feel the pain that coursed over him each time. If he could just keep it away ... then he ... then he wouldn't have to see Sirius' face as he tumbled, finally fallen, behind the veil. That way, he didn't have to see James and Lily's smiling faces, the last time he saw them ... even though they were suspicious of him, they still smiled. Because he was their friend.   
  
Was.   
  
Perhaps it was his name. Remus.   
  
Remus the legendary wolf-child who was murdered by his brother, stories told to him back in school. Not literally his brother, of course, but Peter. Peter had been like a brother to him. They all had been.   
  
Brothers. Friends. They'd had a bond that they couldn't seperate. Even by death, they'd said jokingly. Even he, Remus, had laughed.   
  
Laughed.   
  
He'd forgotten what it was to laugh. 


End file.
